Ordinary Ledger: a monthly cap for the occasional rider

The transport ministers of Germany’s sixteen Länder meet on Wednesday and Thursday in Schwangau, in Bavaria¹. A draft resolution quoted by the Rheinische Post proposes an offer “for occasional users with nationwide validity, analogous to the Deutschlandticket”¹.

How it would work. North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg propose a smartphone check-in and check-out tariff¹. Each trip is recorded, the cheapest fare is worked out automatically, and over a month you would never pay more than a Deutschlandticket costs^2,3. NRW already runs a similar scheme³. “Whoever only occasionally travels by bus and train must be able to do so just as simply and on fair terms as frequent riders with the Deutschlandticket,” said NRW transport minister Oliver Krischer¹.

The ledger. The Deutschlandticket costs €63 a month and rises to €66.80 in January¹. A single fare in Berlin is now €4, according to Der Spiegel, about 90% more than the €2.10 it cost almost twenty years ago³. Desk arithmetic: at €4 a trip, sixteen trips in a month cost €64 and the seventeenth takes you past the January ticket price of €66.80.

The objection. The host, Bavaria’s transport minister Christian Bernreiter, rejects the proposal; there is a shortage of money everywhere, he says². That is not a speech. It is a budget line, and it deserves an answer in euros.

The constructive reading. A monthly cap is a dull idea. It needs a fare database, an app and a clearing system between transport associations. It would also help the people who are least well served today: those who ride the bus now and then.